


Limbo

by thinskinnedcalciumsipper



Series: The Emperor of the Kingdom Dolorous [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:17:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3450200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinskinnedcalciumsipper/pseuds/thinskinnedcalciumsipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the pyro, alone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

There is no night except the sleep you fall into every seventh day, after the crunch of hunger and the pale dream you pass through to respite.

You patrol till blood fills your boots. Your hours become so tall.

You spend many bellies of petrol painting fires. There is always more. It is a magic place, a long dream of wild childhood, infinite walls. There is no market, no competition, no contest.

There is only you, alone.

The fort is constant, patient, permitting you passage up its remotest avenues, and you know them, the bends, bricks, nicks and pebbles even when you have lost the color of your eyes.

Sounds are spare and precious -- the building ticking, the wind, the lowing, the tinny cries of crows.

You are sick. You are confused. Sometimes you forget the cow is only imaginary until you've put your arms around her neck, finding her flat. Sometimes you waste days seeking the source of the birdsong that fills the yard -- it is recorded, you recall only after your time is spent, laying in the gray water where you fall, only tintype specters installed to taunt you. You don't understand why.

Sometimes you see things that aren't real.

It's warm, all the time, always summer, blurry and bleary and hard to see. You rinse the lenses of your mask in the dim water that flows from the stones, sometimes, but it scarcely helps -- it is not cleaner than you.

You were once instructed to never remove your mask -- to never under any circumstances reveal your face -- so you never do -- for you have so little left of him, not his name, not the shape of his face, nothing but what habits he installed in you, and you treasure them.

When the worms come out, you hide in the closet in the waking room, and you tell yourself a story:

Once there was an invisible man -- he'd hurt you if he was able -- a long time ago, he terrified you, but now, you miss him. He was so beautiful, that thin, mean, mincing man! you wonder, sometimes -- when you begin to slip away -- if he isn't there, still, hiding somewhere in plain sight -- periodically, with the meticulosity particular to your type, you pass your bright breath over every inch, every angle, every impossible apex of the fort, feeling in the dark for him, peering into the air for his rueful laugh, but he simply isn't there -- there is no one there. Perhaps you imagined him, after all. People can't disappear. Can they? You wish you could ask ■■■■.

Sometimes you travel to the stone of the fort, where you lingered so long at his side -- looking at the detritus, you can almost recall the beautiful amber bell of his baritone -- there you've arranged your collection of trinkets and toys that dim with your memories, the baseballs, balloons and bones, sonnets you've inscribed on the wall crossed with frantic gashes, paper portraits of rainbows and white birds you light though it no longer warrants delight -- it is a gesture intentionless as breath, now, even when you apply fire to yourself; the pain is transient, dry and quiet, and you are returned so swiftly to tedious time.

It's a sad place, but it's safe. Seraphs have stood there.

There is a dimly lit glass tableau set in the wall of the northerly hall of the atheneum, and sometimes there is a woman inside -- she sits so still and her hair is so shiny, so perfectly arranged, you think she must not be a real woman, not a meat woman. You knock and knock and knock but she never turns around. 

You wish she'd give you something to eat. She's difficult to see -- her paper-white nape dressed in indigo dark, a radiant light in the lens of her spectacles -- but you imagine she must be pretty. You wish she'd speak to you. Her disinterest hurts.

You flow away from the site of the glass, down-hearted -- lest you reengage yourself immediately, you are in danger -- if you slip out of time -- if you wander into the wild, away from your skin and the state of affairs -- encountering there hollows of your comrades, longer, narrower than in life, pale and looking -- and the gasping squall and monochrome scream in which you realize you can't find him -- no matter how many times you drown yourself, you cannot wash it away

then in the merciful mental midnight that inevitably ebbs in and sinks your despair, walking beside yourself, hand in hand, you wander through the sewer to the other end of the fort, to the blue room hidden in the earth, cold and quiet, a mausoleum, a whales stomach -- from the threshold with your hands folded you look, reverently, at the scrolls -- something you once strived for, fought over -- it represented praise you coveted like a drug -- now a relic you dare not touch.

You don't know a lot -- you can't see well -- you're confused, you are sick, you are so sad -- but you know something thrown will fall -- you know the measure of legends. You know what will happen when your task is completed.

You want to see him again, but you understand he's gone somewhere you cannot follow.


End file.
